The second-generation Ethernet switch from Mellanox, Spectrum-2, strongly supports the emerging IEEE 802.3bs 200GbE and 400GbE standards. The company has provided Ethernet adapters since 2007, though only the two switch generations are designed with Ethernet in mind. It introduced dedicated Ethernet chips two years ago by offering the first Spectrum generation.

Spectrum-2 offers 16x400GbE ports or 32x200GbE ports, the latter standard being oft neglected. It's a single-chip device with 300ns latency and an aggregate L2 switching/L3 routing capacity of 6.4Tbps, or 9.52 billion packets per second. Spectrum-2 uses 128 native 50Gbps PAM4 serdes, which can also operate in optional 25Gbps NRZ mode, to provide the most port configurations. Its architecture allows "smart cut-through" between ports of different speeds -- for example, 25GbE to 100GbE in a top-of-rack (ToR) topology.

Mellanox distinguishes the 16nm Spectrum-2 not only through port diversity but also through a large shared-memory packet buffer. It adds load-balancing and quality-of-service (QoS) features relative to Spectrum. Adaptive Flowlet Routing (the company's name for flowlet switching) improves the load balancing of equal-cost-multipath (ECMP) routing, and the new chip implements a dynamic flow-prioritization scheme to distinguish long-lived ("elephant") packet flows from short-lived ("mice") flows.

The memory and QoS enhancements will appeal to hyperscale data-center operators and their OEM/ODM suppliers. Mellanox offers OEMs a choice of system-level products or chips; these customers can start with its system-level SN3xxx switches and later move to an in-house system design using the standalone Spectrum-2. Still, to take on Broadcom's Tomahawk switch directly, Mellanox must become as visible in switch-chip sales as it is in switching-system sales. In the near term, Spectrum-2 will face Innovium's Teralynx switch chips, which also use 50Gbps PAM4 serdes to enable 200GbE and 400GbE ports.

Acquired company recently - tiny mention during CC but didn't go into detail. Now it's known:

In August 2017, Mellanox acquired privately held Cigol Digital Systems Ltd., a company consisting of IDF cyber experts who specialize in FPGA-based security solutions. Mellanox acquired Cigol for its expertise in network security, crypto engines and FPGA design.

The acquisition allows Mellanox to broaden its customer base by adding the necessary security building blocks designed to enable customers to achieve more robust and secure interconnect solutions. The Cigol acquisition will help improve Mellanox's ability to deliver faster time-to-market, high-end security solutions.

RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) technology is designed to solve the delay of server-side data processing in network transmission. RDMA enables network adapters to access the application buffer directly, bypassing the kernel, the CPU, and the protocol stack, so the CPU can perform more useful tasks during the I/O transport. This improves server performance, thus enabling application workloads to be highly scalable with high bandwidth networks.

RDMA (RoCE), based on converged Ethernet, can be implemented on an existing open Ethernet network. With RoCE, there is no need to convert data centers legacy infrastructures, which allows companies to save on capital spending.

RoCE enables introducing RDMA technology seamlessly into an Ethernet data center, which benefits applications by making them more efficient, without requiring massive changes to the current network infrastructure.

DPDK - Data Path Development Kit

DPDK provides a simple and complete framework for fast packet processing in data plane applications. The tool set allows developers to rapidly build new prototypes.

The Mellanox open source DPDK software enables industry standard servers and provides the best performance to support large-scale, efficient production deployments of Network Function Virtualization (NFV) solutions such as gateways, load balancers, and enhanced security solutions that help prevent denial of service attacks in the data center.

“This deployment demonstrates our commitment to the China market underscored by the collaboration with Alibaba,” said Amir Prescher, senior vice president of business development, Mellanox Technologies. “Spurred on by Mellanox’s continued strategic investment in the region, China overall is migrating to 25/100G.”

High-speed network adapters and distributed flash-storage arrays are about to get a boost. Mellanox is testing the first silicon of its new BlueField processor and plans to begin general sampling in October. Barring any last-minute problems, volume production should start in 1H18. The company has doubled the chip's original packet-throughput target to 200Gbps.

BlueField combines intellectual property (IP) from three recently merged companies: Mellanox, EZchip, and Tilera. Mellanox's main contribution is the ConnectX-5 Ethernet adapter, which becomes a fully integrated subsystem in the new SoC. From EZchip, the processor inherits vital packet acceleration. And from Tilera, it gains cryptography acceleration, a previously unreleased ARMv8 design, and experience building manycore processors using meshed tiles of programmable CPUs.

In particular, BlueField adopts the ARMv8 architecture and some acceleration hardware originally planned for Tilera's next-generation Tile-Mx line. Instead of the ARM Cortex-A53 cores envisioned for the Tile-Mx100, however, Mellanox is using the brawnier Cortex-A72, which delivers about 2.5x more throughput per clock cycle. Thus, the largest BlueField design -- a 16-core chip -- will have about the same CPU horsepower as a 40-core A53-based chip. With help from the ConnectX-5 subsystem and other acceleration hardware, BlueField targets 200-gigabit networking -- twice as fast as Tilera's design target for the canceled Tile-Mx100.

Although BlueField is running about three quarters behind the company's original schedule, it's coming hot on the heels of Broadcom's new NetXtreme BCM58808H processor, which also uses Cortex-A72 and is similar in other ways. Broadcom's octa-core chip will probably reach the market first, though, because it's already sampling.